Time for a New Design?

58 Responses

1 • January 19, 2009 at 8:22 am — paul says:

definitely better. easier on the eyes too.

2 • January 19, 2009 at 8:25 am — Jeff Starr says:

Thanks paul! I think so too! :)

3 • January 19, 2009 at 8:52 am — Irina says:

I like it a lot, except for the headlines which look crowded. (And sorry for any typos in this comment, because my eyes don’t do dark grey on mid grey!)

4 • January 19, 2009 at 8:52 am — Nathan says:

It also works on a 1024×864 display. Nice work!

5 • January 19, 2009 at 9:02 am — John says:

While I am a fan of minimalistic designs, I personally think that you went a bit overboard with that concept.

If you decide to change anything, I personally think that having a background in the content area (between the header and the footer which both have dark backgrounds) would make the content a little less all-over-the-place, if you know what I mean.

Either way, I’ll be using the ol’ "Quintessential" theme when browsing this site. Good attempt at a new theme, though.

6 • January 19, 2009 at 9:08 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Irina: Thanks! Where are you seeing “dark grey on mid grey,” btw?

@Nathan: Thank you! :)

@John: Thanks for the input! It is greatly appreciated :)

7 • January 19, 2009 at 9:31 am — Shirley says:

Well, this is definitely a simple way to go. But I did really like the sidebar in the previous design. It was a quick way to access everything without scrolling.

8 • January 19, 2009 at 9:36 am — Donace says:

When I first came here I thought an update broke something with my side or your side :p

While yes easier on the eyes (and cpu :p) hmm its a flip…i’ll give it a few days :D

9 • January 19, 2009 at 9:51 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Shirley: Yes, that is a good point — there is a bit more work involved to find content, and that may return to bite me before its over, but I really needed a change and felt that a return to single-column was the way to go.

@Donace: This new theme resolves several significant issues that people were having with the previous theme; namely, poor contrast/readability, too-wide content, no IE6 support, and sluggishness on old machines while scrolling. This theme may look simple, but it is a performance-optimized, fine-tuned piece of themery! ;)

10 • January 19, 2009 at 9:56 am — Bill Brown says:

Ubuntu Firefox (all versions) has an issue with fixed backgrounds, transparency and content set to overflow:auto. It becomes very jerky and non-responsive while scrolling. You have a fair amount of code blocks on your site, so while browsing your site, I would switch to my virtual XP window and view it in Chrome. This use to annoy me a little…like a splinter in the cornea.

This new theme is much more responsive. As an added bonus, it’s easier for my 78% colorblind eyes to read.

In short, Requiem gets my vote.
Update: I am now responding with Chrome because Firefox/Ubuntu reports a Forbidden *and* a Not Found error when I try to leave a comment. Probably something to do with my redirects or referrers being turned off.

11 • January 19, 2009 at 10:05 am — Simon says:

Personal story : when I first saw your Quintessential theme, I was genuinely impressed by its aesthetics and I wished I had such a beautiful theme on my own website. Put simply, I was blown away by your talent.

This morning, when I fired up my browser and loaded your site, I first wondered if I had any connection problem, as your new theme gave me the impression to see though a grey filter… I wondered if something might have gone wrong with the CSS & images loading, but then I noticed your post about the new theme.

While it’s true that Requiem is slightly easier on the eyes, I find the aesthetic compromise unappealing.

Fortunately, you allow us to revert to an older theme and I am writing these lines in Quintessential.

Keep up your good work, though !

STL

12 • January 19, 2009 at 10:10 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Bill: Glad to hear the new theme is easier to read — that is certainly one of the reasons why I felt the new theme necessary. You would trip on how many people found Quint. too difficult to read. Also, I hope the commenting issue is local and not affecting other visitors.

@Simon: Yes, Quint. is still available, and, depending on how this “trial” run of Requiem goes, I may end up switching back. Either way, I needed to have a solid, user-friendly theme available for those who need it. Accessibility is important, as we are all aware!

13 • January 19, 2009 at 10:14 am — Stereo Zeitgeist says:

I casually browsed through here on Google and read an article on Saturday.

I came back TODAY because the theme stuck in my mind.

Think about it. :)

14 • January 19, 2009 at 10:27 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Stereo Zeitgeist: Oh, I have indeed thought about it, probably more than I should! ;) We’ll see how it goes, but your point is well-taken. Thanks for the advice! :)

15 • January 19, 2009 at 10:53 am — Dan Felton says:

I like the general style, but the color of the links seems out of place. I probably would have made them dark grey to match the rest of the theme.

16 • January 19, 2009 at 11:06 am — fuzion says:

It looks a little generic in my opinion, though the old one was a little resource intensive on my not so top of the line box. Also, think about what Stereo Zeitgeist said ;)

17 • January 19, 2009 at 11:10 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Dan Felton: Good point; for the links, my aim is usability. I agree that black or grey links would probably look better, but I think they would be less-clearly identifiable as such. Underlined blue links have long been the standard default and are easily recognizable by many people and on many different systems.

18 • January 19, 2009 at 11:14 am — Bill Brown says:

Dao Gottwald has a nice theme switcher and site whose artistic abilities are on par with yours, IMHO. I don’t think he’s using WordPress though and I don’t know enough about WP to know if his switcher could be adapted for your site.

Anyway, he can be found here:
http://en.design-noir.de/

(His site is fun to poke around on, too.)

19 • January 19, 2009 at 11:16 am — Jeff Starr says:

@fuzion: On the surface, yes, the appearance of this design may seem generic; however, I assure you that, upon closer inspection, the amount of work that went into fine-tuning and optimizing the details should become apparent. I won’t get into all of that now, as I want to hear people’s initial impressions from the most objective perspective possible.

20 • January 19, 2009 at 11:17 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Bill: Thanks for pointing that out — will certainly check it out..

21 • January 19, 2009 at 11:46 am — Alexander says:

It looks like a great theme however passing from Quintessential to this one kind of looks like a downgrade, like a more newbie theme than a pro one.

Although its still a very nice theme. :)

22 • January 19, 2009 at 12:01 pm — rick says:

The full justified type is evil - ruins the spacing and pretty much says “hey, I don’t care about typography.” to me. Aside from that… it’s generic. Oh, I’m sure the CSS is carefully done, but it’s a header with sans-serif body type (+1 for defaulting to Helvetica) and a serif header. /yawn from a visual point of view, but /cheer from a ‘design gets out of the way of the content’ pov. Aside from the full-justified type. Which is… evil.

23 • January 19, 2009 at 12:07 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@Alexander: Thanks for the feedback — I count that as a vote for the previous theme! ;)

@rick: There is nothing inherently “evil” about justified type, and it certainly doesn’t equate to careless typography. While there are some cases where this thinking may apply, I think there are many exceptions to the “rule” (not there actually is one carved in stone somewhere). I appreciate your comment, but happen to care very much about typography and find the justified post text rather appealing, visually speaking.

24 • January 19, 2009 at 12:14 pm — rick says:

Oh I realize there’s no rule… and that you care about typography. It’s why I was surprised to see it here. “evil” was a bit of hyperbole, but full justification distorts the word spacing and, unless the type is carefully laid out, makes copy less readable.

Look at the word spacing on, especially, paragraph 2. It’s stretched out and less readable that if that same paragraph was left justified. In fact, the posts are less readable (to me, of course) than the comments.

There’s little point to caring about the spacing of letters and words if you’re going to full justify them. If you LIKE it… cool. But since you don’t have fine control over widows/orphans, hyphenation rules on the web it’s harder to ensure that text set this way will always look good.

25 • January 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm — Jon says:

Wow, definitely more minimalistic than your prior design (too minimal?). It’s definitely easier on the eyes, and the bandwidth, but the Quintessential theme sure looked sharp.

26 • January 19, 2009 at 2:14 pm — Jessi Hance says:

I really like the new Requiem theme. It looks thoughtfully designed and coded to me. However, like other commenters here, I’d prefer left-justified posts.

27 • January 19, 2009 at 2:36 pm — Stan Rozenraukh says:

I like it, But something about the black on white, is a little too stark and harsher on the eyes.

28 • January 19, 2009 at 2:42 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@rick: You raise some good points. I realize that there is a trade-off between the “macro-aesthetics” (i.e., looking at it from the page or paragraph level) of typography afforded by justified text and the “micro-formatting” of text on more granular levels (words, phrases, links, sentences). For many designs, the irregular right edges of text blocks are easily favorable to the inconsistent spacing introduced via justification. This design, I felt at the time, benefits more from the sense of graphical unity facilitated by uniform blocks of text and consistently symmetrical text edges than it would from evenly spaced words throughout each paragraph. Judgment call. And an experimental lesson in justified text. To my eye, it looks clean, crisp, and precise, although I am fully aware of the slight readability sacrifice.

@Jon: Thanks for the feedback! Keep in mind that Quint. isn’t ruled out as default just yet.. I wanted to get everyone’s feedback before making a final decision. So far, it looks like I may be switching back.

@Jessi: Many thanks! I am glad some of the design’s inherent value (due to long hours of coding, tweaking, testing, etc.) is available to and noticeable by others. Nonetheless, I hear your (and rick’s) concerns about the justified text and will consider changing it to left-justified text if I decide to run with this theme as the default.

29 • January 19, 2009 at 2:47 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@Stan Rozenraukh: Thanks for chiming in! I used to get tons of complaints about the light text on dark background — never would have thought that I would be hearing concerns over the traditional and widely used “black on white” configuration! ;) So many sites are using this particular combination that I can’t help but wonder if your screen is adjusted too brightly or with too much contrast ;)

30 • January 19, 2009 at 2:58 pm — rick says:

Hmm ok I see where you’re going with that. I wonder if there are other design elements that you could use to reinforce that block, rectangular feel. But hey, no experiment, no learning.

31 • January 19, 2009 at 4:09 pm — Chris Coyier says:

Normally I’m an “evolutionary” design style guy. Major major design changes I find can freak people out in a bad way. Also I feel like super nice designs are rarely achieved in the first iteration, but rather in tweak after tweak after tweak. So a HUGE change sort of “resets” that meter and the tweaking needs to start again.

That all being said, I think return to minimalism might be the right move for you. I think it fits your writing style, which needs little visual embellishment to stand =)

32 • January 19, 2009 at 4:20 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@Chris: yes, one of the reasons for the extreme return to minimalism was that I found it too difficult to concentrate on reading and writing while working with the previous theme. I have been using this new design now for nearly a month and find it very relaxing and energizing at the same time. And, I have already been actively improving and tweaking things incrementally along the way. I agree that doing so is essential to making a design the best it can be. Thanks for the comment, Chris — much appreciated! :)

33 • January 19, 2009 at 5:33 pm — Michael says:

A little too minimalistic methinks, needs the stuff at the bottom to go down the side - but a definite improvement for me here on FF3/Vista/Quad Core/3GB, which was VERY slow and sluggish when scrolling, I assume due to all of the content hidden by JS. :)

34 • January 19, 2009 at 5:41 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@Michael: One reason why pages may have been slow and sluggish while scrolling via the previous design has to do with the numerous transparent PNG images, transparent background colors (via CSS), and rounded corners on <pre> elements and post images (again, via CSS). That sort of graphical intensity tends to gobble up the CPUs, especially on slower machines, and especially when scrolling because of the dynamic rendering involved. There is a bit of JavaScript used for the theme as well, but it was optimized and weighs hardly anything. ;)

35 • January 19, 2009 at 7:12 pm — Kim Woodbridge says:

Hmm … the Quinisessential theme is beautiful - a work of art really. But, it is hard for me to read. I have to admit that when I really needed to concentrate on one of your articles, I would read it in my feed reader. The beauty of Quint… was also a distraction to me - I would just sit there wondering how you did various parts and would think about your talent.

I wonder if there is something between the two. While I appreciate the readability of this theme it does seem very minimal.

36 • January 19, 2009 at 7:43 pm — Muhaimin says:

it looks like its a art gallery…but the compartment retains the look of blog

37 • January 19, 2009 at 8:43 pm — Jeff Starr says:

@Kim: the Quintessential is much more expressive in terms of visual and functional design, even to the point of distraction and, as you have pointed out, usability. Conversely, the new Requiem theme was a reactive design that focuses primarily on usability and accessibility, unfortunately at the expense of creativity and a more provocative interface. I am still learning as I go, and think that, if I can do what you suggest and find that happy medium between the two, will finally arrive at a solution that finds the balance and is suitable to everyone. Seems like a worthwhile goal, I think.

@Muhaimin: thanks for the comment, but I think you are looking at the old theme. Re-read the post carefully and activate the new “Requiem” theme. It should look much less like a colorful, compartmentalized art gallery, and much more like a clean, minimalist-inspired design.

38 • January 20, 2009 at 3:36 am — Brian says:

I really liked Quint, but found that it was difficult to read the posts. For that reason, I read 95% of your posts in my RSS reader and only clicked through to the site for fun. Your new design is much easier to read and I feel that a few tweaks can make this a top notch theme. My only real suggestion is that you need to either add some additional navigation to the top or to a sidebar. I do not like scrolling to the bottom of the page to get to the site navigation. And yes, I did see the three links at the top, but not until after I had manually scrolled the page the first time.

39 • January 20, 2009 at 6:06 am — Bleyder says:

Well, I like both designs because you have done a great job. Perhaps I prefer the minimalistic one, but it’s a question of taste.

40 • January 20, 2009 at 6:08 am — Bleyder says:

Well, I like both designs because you have done a great job. Perhaps I prefer the minimalistic one, but it’s a question of taste. I note that the Quintessential theme slow too much my browser (FF, IE, Opera…), maybe due to the background image.

41 • January 20, 2009 at 7:53 am — Jonathan says:

I did a similar job myself recently - and built a theme from the ground up for simplicity of published content, but still a little visual impact - ended up with the following;

http://www.beckettwebdesign.com

42 • January 20, 2009 at 8:03 am — Jeff M says:

Hey Jeff

I like this ‘Requiem’ a lot!

But - I think you need to re-visit the markup of the search form. There is no ‘onsubmit’ attribute defined for a form element in XHTML, as you well know ;)

Btw, what process are you using to tidy the output, and do you think it’s a good idea to do this? (Or is it an in- development thang?)

Cheers, keep it up!

43 • January 20, 2009 at 8:10 am — Irina says:

@jeff: I see dark grey right here, where I’m typing my comment in the box. In fact perhaps it’s black on grey; only punctuation and misspelt words (rather grateful for the latter or I’d misspell more) show up light-coloured.

44 • January 20, 2009 at 8:19 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Irina: and you are using the new minimalist theme, correct? If so, may I ask which operating system and browser you are using so I can investigate and possibly remedy the issue? Also, would an even lighter background for the comment form help with usability? Thanks!

45 • January 20, 2009 at 8:30 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Brian: Thanks for the feedback! There are links at the top (”explore”) and bottom (”top”) that enable quick scrolling to either end of the page, but I realize that this may be a bit esoteric (and difficult to discover) in terms of navigation for the average user dropping in and checking things out. Based on your (and others’) feedback, I am thinking my next theme will be somewhat of a hybrid between this and the previous theme. Sidebar included, of course, for easier navigation! ;)

@Bleyder: Yes, performance is one of the central focal points of the new theme. Far fewer images, transparencies, and rounded borders to slow things down, especially while scrolling. Glad to you hear you like the new minimalist theme. :)

@Jonathan: That is a beautiful theme as well! I would say you accomplished your specified design goals — nice and clean with plenty of visual interest. Kudos!

@Jeff M: No onsubmit attributes defined for for XHTML form elements!?!? Who’s responsible for this! Off with their heads! ;) For the clean output, that is entirely the result of my obsessive-compulsive tweaking of everything I can get my hands on. I much prefer seeing well-formatted and well-structured markup than the jumbled mess spit out by WordPress by default.

46 • January 21, 2009 at 10:10 am — Jeff M says:

Jeffrey!

Your mission statement is standards compliance. Inline event handlers bring the W3C sky down on your head and a plague on thy hoose ;)

Hey. I love tidy markup when I’m pimping a design. But my tests - empirical as they are - show that indentation adds typically 20% or more to the size of the source markup. In the case of this particular page, that would be around 15K or possibly more of tidy but redundant nothingness.

Markup is for machines. They don’t give a rat’s a$$ about tidy.

I am starting to lust for this theme in an unhealthy way, y’nah?

Do I need therapy?

47 • January 21, 2009 at 10:44 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Jeff M: Are you serious?! 20% added to the size of markup just for empty space? I would like to see the experimental results for myself on that one. Not that it would change my mind for this site, but for client sites, where they are paying me to optimize performance, I would certainly consider it as an option. No wonder Google’s home page just spits everything out in a single line.

It is completely healthy to obsess over my themes, but you will have to get yourself a Gravatar to feel the full euphoric effect on this one :)

48 • January 21, 2009 at 10:51 am — Donace says:

speaking of gravatars and performance; did you trial locally cached gravatars then? was there any speed benefits to it or just a waste of a cron job and space

49 • January 21, 2009 at 11:00 am — Jeff Starr says:

@Donace: Did not do any Gravatar testing. Actually, I am using only a small, basic script for displaying the Gravatars in this old version of WordPress (2.3), which doesn’t support them on its own. Even then, the script is included not as a plugin but as a custom function placed in the theme’s functions.php file. One of the reasons for taking this route in the first place was performance; many of the other themes available on the site do not use Gravatars, so I removed the beastly Gravatars II plugin several themes ago and opted for the simpler, functions.php option. I do recall that there was a slight performance boost when the plugin was actually working properly, but half the time caching simply did not work. In fact, now that I think of it, the whole caching functionality of that plugin was a nightmare, causing far more errors and issues than it was worth. Would love to find a better way of doing this, so if you know of one, share it! :)

50 • January 21, 2009 at 11:13 am — Donace says:

ah; ideas;…well as you know im not much of coder but just full of ideas :p

I was just thinking along the lines:

PART1
1) Wordpress checks number of comments by user
2) If comment = > X then Step 3 otherwise end.
3) Grab Users Gravatar from their site (via curl etc)
4) Save these in Folder Y locally

PART2
1) Comment form checks if user is part of ’step 2′ list; if yes step 2 otherwise grabs form gravatar site,
2) use on the fly and/or preloading of these gravatars on pages they comment on.

The benefits of this (the way I see it is)

1) less external requests - the flip side being its internal resource usage now.

2) less http requests - as Part2 Step2 will have the gravatar images cached/prelaoded etc people who comment a lot (yourself etc) will only ‘load’ their Gravatar once (using preloading etc) and just be ‘called’ from the cache multiple times.

3) it’ll be cached! you could probably also add more image tweaks if the need arises to make them ‘more’ smaller or whatever :p

and thats my ‘idea’ I got a million and one of ‘em ;)

51 • January 21, 2009 at 1:56 pm — Louis says:

I hate this, but I need to be honest: I don’t really enjoy the new wallpapers of the house. It’s hard to explain why the whole thing is not appealing to me, but I can try to share some thoughts.

The header

The header is pretty big for such a small logo. This makes me think that the logo has never been discussed. Well, this is a very delicate thing to talk about — I would probably be angry if someone was to discuss my NoPhysic’s logo — but PP is such a open-minded place that I dare to start a discussion :) So, let’s talk about the logo!

When I think about PP, I think about a place of discussion first. These discussions you start, or feed, often take a very intellectual, abstract approch. It evokes me the image of some Harvard professors sitting at a table, discussing anything that comes to their mind.

So when I think about PP, I think of a place that has some of presence, and this should be translated into the typography: I think the font needs serifs. It would add weight, but also be less friendly. The two aspects considered, I think it would be right with the atmosphere. But once again, I’m not you Jeff :)

Also, back to the header as a whole, the unique rounded corner disturb me a little because it breaks the symetry of the main column.

UI elements

The first thing that surprised me when I loaded the page and discovered the new design, was the austerity of the colors. It’s quite professional now, but it’s also clearly less rich than the last iteration.

The B&W is clean — why not? — but the links color is too close to the unstyled links color in my opinion. I don’t like this blue very much. I also find the metadata and visit counter too violent with their contrasted rectangular boxes around them. Reminds me of an administrative form, or a stamp. Finaly, the search form color makes it quite hard to see, and I’m wondering if such an important functionality wouldn’t be better put directly in the header.

Aaah, something great now, the comments! They are awesome! The spacing is perfect, and the presentation fabulous. it’s clear to read, and the Gravatars make it more human. Very well done here Jeff, I love it!

The comment form is quite handy too. The focus color is a little bit under-contrasted in my opinion, but for my young eyes, it’s no problem and I like the subtle variation. The textarea is a little too large though, remember that the maximum line lenght is usually considered to be 70 characters — it goes the same for the main content.

The footer

Minor details on the footer — which is great by the way.

There is a problem with the position of the star before “Explore Perishable Press” in the footer on my browser. The star is glued to the “Explore” without padding.

The search field is nearly invisible on Safari. Also, I’m against modifications of the browser natural UI, but that’s another story :d

Final words

I wanted to make a constructed criticism of the new design, so I underlined the points that I judge problematic. Though, it’s not very fair for the good things you’ve come up with this time. I talked a little about the comments, which I love, but there are a lot of things that I like too.

So, I don’t like the new design very much, but don’t be disappointed, it’s not like I thought it was horrible; it’s quite pleasant. Just not the charismatic design I would imagine for Perishable Press.

Now seriously, good work Jeff :)

52 • January 22, 2009 at 12:57 am — Jeff M says:

Jeff

That would be a worst case, where the output is a DOM transform with indent=’yes’, which indents with contiguous spaces (not ideal). Using tabs to indent (which you are) mitigates the size of the void, but remember the void also comprises newlines.
So in the case of your tidiness, the redundancy is actually around 8% or 9%.
Still something to consider, though.

53 • January 23, 2009 at 7:10 pm — mccormicky says:

Requiem! I like it. Because I am a reader of this site,because your articles have helped me a lot. Quintessential was pretty but this I can read for days.I had to jump in and get out fast when you had Quintessential up.It is distracting. I think you have achieved usable minimalism without looking too plain.

54 • January 24, 2009 at 12:59 pm — Shadow Caster says:

I honestly prefer the old theme. This is just too plain.

55 • January 24, 2009 at 8:27 pm — teddY says:

Hi Jeff! Sorry for taking so long to leave a comment about your new layout. The past few weeks were pretty insane for me and finally I have a long weekend to stretch my legs… on the Internet, that is :)

What I absolutely love about this new theme is a readability. I wouldn’t say that the readability of your previous theme was bad (white against grey is good too!), but having a plain, solid coloured background makes things more readable and easy on the eyes. I love the single-column layout, which eliminates the potential clutter and distraction of a sidebar (some even have sidebar’S’ - three-columns or more).

I like what you’ve did to the post metadata, by hiding them conveniently away from the regular visitor but also placing a link at the top to prompt others that it exists. The placement of post metadata is a big pain in the butt for me when it comes to creating layout because I have simply no idea where to chuck them - looks like the sleek hide/unhide is the way to go. I like it!

Everything looks fine to be except for two - the lack of padding around the header and the footer, and the blue coloured links. I wouldn’t go on a wild bashing, since it’s your site, afterall *smiles* and I know you definitely have your own reasons and logic behind the elimination of white space around the header and footer. For the blue links, it just reminds me of the good old Internet days when visited links are purple and fresh links are blue :D

Have a great weekend!

56 • January 27, 2009 at 10:50 pm — Jeff Starr says:

Thank you everyone for the excellent comments! As announced, I have decided to keep the previous Quintessential theme for the time being. Behind the scenes, I continue to work with the new Requiem theme, as I find it to be preferable in many respects.

In the meantime, I am brainstorming for a good way to combine the best aspects of both themes. Something dark-text on light-background with plenty of detail and a nice sidebar to boot. Sounds like I am going mainstream with that idea, but there is still plenty of room to exercise my creativity between the cracks. In any case, I am thankful to enjoy such a critically minded and challenging audience. Cheers!

57 • March 11, 2009 at 3:54 pm — Aladdin says:

awesome them i like nice work.

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